The town hall wasn’t given by George A. Draper. It was a gift of his father, George Draper. Click here for more on the Hopedale Community, here for the Draper family and corporation, and here for the town hall.
Army of Volunteers? Where did that come from? Perhaps the writer of that caption was thinking of the Industrial Army of the Hopedale Community, but the Draper houses weren’t maintained by volunteers. They were maintained by paid Draper workers. Click here for more on the Draper homes, and here for the Unitarian Church.
Click here for more on Bancroft Park, and here to go to the South Hopedale Menu. Spindles were used for spinning threads and yarns. They weren’t used in looms.
Click here for more on the “Pest House,” which was the place said above to have “…once housed the townspeople suffering from serious illnesses of the time.” The town bought the house to be used as a place to care for a man who had come down with smallpox, and owned it for many years. However there is no record of it ever having been used for that purpose again. Click here for Three Houses on West Street.
